Do You Have Social Media Kred?

So you have a LinkedIN account, a Facebook Page and a Twitter account. Maybe you check in to your gym or the place you have lunch on Foursquare, post videos on YouTube and try your best to figure out how to fit Google Plus into the mix. In short, you’re doing what people like me have been urging you to do—you’re engaged in social media conversation. Congratulations.

Now, do you know what your social standing is? Do you have Kred? Do you have Klout?

Just as a bank uses your credit score to measure your financial soundness, and Google Analytics measures your website’s reach, services Klout.com and Kred.com measure your social media influence. If you haven’t used either of these services, it’s worth the time to head over to each site and check it out. But be warned, once you sign up and see your scores, odds are human nature will kick in and you will become obsessed with improving them.

Klout measures, as the language distorting name implies, your social “clout.” When you sign up, you authorize the service to connect to at least one of your social accounts (Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus) and allowing access to more will yield a more accurate measure of your influence across the entire social Web. Klout can also connect to LinkedIN, YouTube, Foursquare, Instagram, WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, Last.fm and Flicker—with half a dozen more on the way.

Klout uses these connections to come up with your Klout Score, reported as a number on a scale of one to 100. The average score is in the 20s, and as one’s score moves up the scale, it’s much more difficult to increase one’s Klout Score. Klout defines influenced as “the ability to drive action” and looks at interaction through social networks over a rolling 90-day period.

Julie Shaffer is Vice President, Digital Technologies at Printing Industries of America. She heads up the Digital Printing Council (DPC), as well as the Center for Digital Printing Excellence at Printing Industries headquarters in Sewickley, PA. In her position, Julie plays a lead role in developing programs and tools to help members grow their businesses with digital technologies.

Known for her graphic production expertise, Julie has a 20-plus year background in pre-media and print. She is often called upon for training, presentations and to provide on-site consulting throughout the industry on diverse range of topics, including PDF, color management, digital printing, social media and Web-to-print implementation. Julie is co-author of several books, including "The PDF Print Production Guide" (1st, 2nd and 3rd edition), the "Web-to-Print Primer" and the forthcoming "Field Guide to Social Media."

From a business marketers point of view, all these measures sure are neat gimmicks. But the bottom line is do they actually lead to a transaction of the sale? Do any social marketing devices ever really have a call to action to make an immediate purchase and can you show an actual ROI on their use?

Can our slow economic recovery be the result of a nationwide corporate shift to passive "inbound marketing" methods? Is this the reason unemployment remains relatively high and sales are struggling? Best Buy announced closing 50 stores just this morning. Can it be we have forgotten how to build customer loyalty and customer relationships? If we continue "waiting for" customers to come to us, businesses nationwide will be closing their doors tomorrow. If no one is buying our ‘stuff’, soon no one will be employed and fewer people would buy it. It’s a cycle that works both ways. It’s time America stopped ‘playing it safe’ and got back to what we do best – making a buck. After all, when unemployment is low businesses and America does well.

Enough of the new non-working cute customer to me methods of marketing products – they don’t work!

Marc Aguilera

My Klout is 55 and at one time it was up to 62. It’s hard to keep it high. Personal twitter followers are almost at 700 @colorcritical but company followers are at 66 @emaginedigital